Sydney

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Hello,

We arrived in Sydney at midnight and checked into our hostel - Wake Up. It was a really good place, more like a hotel and very tight on security. There was even a club in the basement. You can't get in without a swipe card and you can only get to your floor level, you can't gain access to any other floors which is good. We met a few people in our 8 bed dorm and hit the sack ready to start exploring Sydney the next day.

We made the most of our first day and headed out and found ourselves on the geeky open top tourist bus! Bit chilly for it but it had to be done!! We went all around Sydney seeing the sights. We hopped off at Darling Harbour (which I love) and went to the Aquarium which was great. Loads of nasty looking scary stuff in there including some huge scorpions and sharks and the biggest stingray I have ever seen. After that we headed to The Rocks and had our first glimpses off the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. It was so surreal seeing them for the first time after years of seeing them on TV or in other people's pictures etc. Took loads of pictures from all the viewpoints and then headed back on the bus and went to Kings Cross - not a great place for obvious reasons!

Had our first night out that night. We headed down to Side Bar in the basement with Ricky in our dorm who is from Tottenham with loads of BOGOF vouchers and then headed out to Scruffy Murphys which we had heard about before we got here and danced the night away with the Irish!

The next day we got up and headed back to The Rocks to do the Harbour Bridge climb. I felt slightly on edge the whole way there after reading that you had to pass a breath test before you could climb - eeek!!! Why didn't I stop drinking earlier the night before? Thankfully after drinking 12 pints of water and eating McDonalds I was declared safe to climb! ha ha. We did the climb in a group of 9. As well as us 3 there were 3 men and their 3 daughters who had come down from the Sunshine Coast. They were all really nice. We got all kitted up and met Bernie our climb leader. He was the strangest man ever! He started off quite funny and then became a bit strange. He was very knowledgable though and told us loads of things on the way up from his microphone. We all had headsets on we that he could communicate with us properly. The whole climb was great. It was a bit knackering walking up all the stairs when my legs were still hurting from so much dancing the night before but the views from the top were well worth it! It wasn't in the slightest bit scary being that high up and at the very top Deaks finally had her first "moment"!! What a place to have it! I had another one too but that happens quite often for me these days! Had some great pictures taken up there. We were on the bridge for about 2 hours and it was freezing and so windy at the top I thought I was going to get swept off!

After the climb we headed to the Lyric Theatre as Phantom of the Opera has come to Sydney but we couldn't get any tickets :0(. It would have been so good to see it here but I'll have to save that for when I'm home (hint!). After that we headed back to Kings Cross as we'd seen an advert for an all you can eat curry place with a cinema upstairs which sounded like a good idea for a chilled out night. We arrived at Govindas excited about curry and naan bread, went up to the buffet to find bread, soup, potato wedges, a pasta dish, deep fried cauliflower and a few other random dishes. Call that a curry!!!!! On closer inspection we discovered that everything was vegetarian!!!! We looked around the restaurant to find posters on the wall saying "we don't kill animals"! Trust us to find the only vegetarian curry place in Sydney which wasn't even really a curry place!!! I got out the book that it was advertised in and there was no mention of it being vegetarian. Very funny! We decided against the film as we didn't want to see the one they were showing so we headed over to Darling Harbour and watched Wild in Africa 3D at the IMAX Theatre. It was quite cool and has the biggest screen in the world but I actually fell asleep before it finished. Think I have come to a point of severe exhaustion. I feel like I could fall asleep standing up but there's just too much to do here!! We got back to the hostel at 10pm and were informed by Ricky that we now had a drug dealer in our dorm - nice! He checked in whilst we were out and one of the other guys in our dorm, Gavin, said "that's my drug dealer"!!! As well as him we had a stroppy teenage Canadian girl in our dorm. She is working here so is staying in the hostel long term. She stormed in whilst we were all chatting, muttered something about "f*cking English" and stormed back out!!! Nice girl. She is the messist roommate we've had yet, her stuff was everywhere and there was hardly anywhere to put any of our stuff.

Had to get up at 6am the next morning for our trip to the Blue Mountains. What a funny day, despite the tiredness! We went with Oz Experience. Our driver came to pick us up and I didn't know where to look when he walked in. I just remember thinking how unfortunate looking he was - he had the goofiest teeth I have ever seen, he could barely talk they were so bad and he had very wrong hair!!! He was acting strange as well and I was thinking it was going to be a very LONG day! We got in the minibus and he started laughing and said he couldn't do it anymore and pulled out the fake teeth and took off the wig and all of a sudden he was transformed into a very good looking aussie man!!!! I couldn't believe it and cursed myself for being so gullible!!! Deaks had guessed that the teeth weren't real but I don't think many others had! His name was Adam but his Oz Experience name was Knackers! It turned out his girlfriend had just had a baby (cutest thing I have ever seen!) and it was his first day back at work and he was itching to have some fun!

Our first stop was to do some kangaroo spotting in the wild. As well as the koalas, I have now seen my fair share of the roos so I didn't wander too far and luckily one made himself known to us and just hopped around showing off so there was minimal effort required there! Next we headed up into the mountains and did a 3 hour Grand Canyon trek. The Blue Mountains get their name because when the oil evaporates from all the eucalyptus trees and the sun shines down it creates a hazy blue look. The trek was brilliant but exhausting! It reminded me of being back in Chiang Mai doing the trek up the mountain! We went all the way down into a gorge and back up and once we reached the top we were greeted with the most amazing views of the mountains. We had lunch there and headed off to do another walk which involved going down 1000 steps. Half way down we stopped at a great viewpoint where the Three Sisters rocks are. Knackers decided to pull out some fancy dress masks and picked people out the group to do a little play to explain to us how the rocks got their name. Very funny. We carried on down to the bottom where Knackers thanked us for being a great group and then informed us that when opening his Coco Pops that morning he had found a pedometer so had brought it along to see how many steps we'd walked that day and said he had a prize for anyone that could guess. People were guessing 25,000, 7,000, 30,000 and I suddently shouted out 13,000 and I won! Woo hoo. My prize was a koala who I named Keeley. What a good guess! To get back up we had to get on the world's steepest train (it's in the Guinness Book of Records). It was actually quite scary - you get pulled up the track backwards so are left facing straight down as it goes up. We headed home after that, firstly stopping at Blue Mountains YHA to pick up people who had stayed overnight from the previous day trip. We cheered on Knackers to wind them all up so back in went the goofy teeth and on went the wig. The people all got in the minibus and were looking a bit scared at the state of our driver. He decided to take it one step further and pretended he had tourettes. I have never laughed so much in my life. He started driving and kept taking his foot on and off the accelerator so we were jumping along the road and he started shouting out to other drivers "f*ck - which way to Sydney? - f*ck" in his goofy voice! The newcomers then got very scared and started asking if he'd been like this all day. He took the teeth back out and things returned to normal for our 2 hour journey back to Sydney and we watched Finding Nemo. Great day and definitely the best tour guide we've had so far.

That night we entered our dorm room to witness the drug dealing first hand. Wasn't too happy about randoms coming in and out of our room but hey! The drug dealer is only about 19 or 20 and from Guernsey and looks like he comes from quite a posh family - if only they knew! He's stoned 24/7 so can barely string a sentence together but apart from that he's alright!

That night we went on a bit of a bar crawl, firstly to Side Bar then to Scubar, Scruffy Murphys and back to Side Bar. Not quite sure why but there weren't many people around for a Thursday night and most of the places we went were half empty and we couldn't find any cheesy music so we came back to the hostel, kidnapped Ricky and took him downstairs. He left his wallet in a cab so lost all his bank cards etc so is waiting for them to be sent here and not doing much in the meantime but he knows the managers of the hostel so he can get cheap drinks in the bar.

The next day Suz went off to get her hair cut and Deaks and I decided to kidnap Ricky again and the three of us went to Bondi on the open topped bus again! The beach was nice but a bit overrated I think and a lot smaller than I imagined. It was freezing as well so only the surfers were out. We took some pictures there and went for a walk and had lunch and then went shopping on the way back. That night we headed out again and tried some different places around the city but everywhere we went was practically empty again! We must have been going to the wrong places! We did find one packed place but it was such a meat market and full of pervs! Apparently we should head to Kings Cross for a night out so will have to give that a go!

The next day we checked out of Wake Up and headed to Circular Quay and caught a ferry over to Manly. The ferry ride is great and has good views of the bridge and the opera house. We arrived in Manly and were greeted by my friend Kylie. I worked with her at DLA 6 years ago when she spent a few years in London. It was so good to see her after all this time and meet her fiance Paul. We went to their place where we were staying for the weekend and then they took us to North Palm Beach - where Home and Away is filmed. It was really weird seeing it for real. Haven't watched H&A for about 6 years but remembered it so clearly. Saw the surf club too!

We got some drinks from a drive-thru bottle shop (how random!) and then headed home for a BBQ on the balcony. Nice to have a proper aussie barbie! One of Kylie's friends came over too and we sat drinking and chatting all night, it was a really nice evening.

We headed back to Sydney the next day and checked back into Wake Up. Our old room was full so couldn't get back in there so had to go to a 6 bed dorm (which was thankfully drug free!). A couple of hours later I got a text from the one and only Columbian Felipe! He was in Sydney and waiting outside to say hello! So random, this is now the 4th country we've seen him in and he was one of the first people we met on this trip 3 months ago.

We ended up drinking in Side Bar all night with Ricky from our old dorm and Felipe and his friend Juan who has lived in Sydney for 9 years. We played pool and chatted all night and then Juan offered to give me a ride around Sydney on his motorbike (don't worry Dad he hadn't been drinking!) so off I went all excited and we set off. He had these cool helmets with speakers inside so we could talk to each other. It was so cool and not as scary as I thought it would be. He took me everywhere and we must have been gone about an hour so we headed back and I was greeted outside the bar by a very relieved looking Deaks who ran over to me, flung her arms around me and cried "Lisa Phillips, I thought you had died!". It took me about 5 minutes to assure her I was fine - she gets very emotional when drunk!

The next day we had a well deserved lay in and then headed on a 40 minute walk to the Opera House. The weather was great so it was a nice walk. The Opera House was really weird close up, the roof is made of little tiles that you can see really clearly when you get close - it's nothing like I imagined from looking at it from a distance but still really cool.

This brings me to the end of Sydney (nearly!) :o( I don't want to leave and will no doubt throw a tantrum at some point in the next week and have to be dragged to the airport!!! We have a night out planned tonight before heading to Alice Springs tomorrow morning to do the Ayers Rock trip and then we'll be back in Sydney for 1 night before flying to New Zealand UNLESS my plan to find an aussie husband works. At the moment I'm proposing to everyone I meet in the hope of getting residency. I'm convinced that someone will say yes soon ;o)

Bye for now.

xxx

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